What Causes Acne?
What Are The Causes Of Acne?
Acne is widespread and common.For most people, it is another of life’s little trials. Seemingly few will escape.For the worst of reasons, suffering from acne is a memorable part of the experience of growing up for a lot of people. Understanding what causes acne, though, is the first important step you can take toward learning how to minimize it as much as possible.
What causes acne?
The first step to understanding the root cause of acne is to understand how the skin on your face is structured.The surface of your skin can have millions of tiny hairs growing up through millions of tiny openings called pores.At the base of these pores are the small oil producing sebaceous glands. The name of the oil they produce is sebum.
In normal, non-acne skin, the sebum produced helps to keep your skin smooth, moisturized, and healthy.It does this by working it’s way up through the pore until it reaches the skin surface. Sebum not only helps to keep your skin moist, but it also helps to carry away things like bacteria and dead skin cells.You can’t stop your skin getting dirty, but it is comforting to know that nature has provided a ready made solution.
Acne develops when this natural process is interrupted or thrown out of balance.This happens when the body has to learn to deal with an increase in hormone production, adolescence for example.These changes in hormone levels during the learning process can cause many difficulties, the development of acne being one of them.
How acne actually forms
When your body produces extra hormones, it causes the sebaceous glands under the skin to produce much more sebum than before. Additionally, these hormones can cause the pores of your skin to have a much more difficult time getting rid of the dead skin cells that naturally occur.This will leave you with a clogged pore which will inevitability lead to swelling, inflammation, infection, and skin tenderness once the bacteria combines with the dead skin cells and excess sebum.
What happens next is you begin to form various types of acne lesions on your skin; these can include whiteheads, blackheads, and pimples. It is these common lesions that make up what we know as acne, that troublesome rite of passage that causes so much pain and difficulty for some people.
Living and dealing with acne
While there is no way to 100% get rid of acne problems, there are a number of things you can do to make living with it and dealing with it easier. These include:
• Cleanse your skin – Use a gentle facial cleanser twice per day to help get rid of excess oils, dead skin cells, and bacteria.Scrubbing your skin can lead to more acne because of the irritation. Gentle cleansing is always best.
• Apply anti-acne medication – Many excellent medications exist, some of which do not require a doctor’s prescription. These medications help to reduce the production of sebum, encourage the removal of dead skin cells, and cut down on the amount of bacteria on your skin.
• Moisturize your skin – Dry skin is not healthy and healthy skin is more resistant to acne, so moisturize your skin.The last thing you want to do is to add more oil to your skin, so a light in texture, oil-free moisturizer is ideal.
Knowledge is power and knowing what causes acne gives you the opportunity to do something about it. When you have the right information at your fingertips you are well on your way to minimizing your acne problems!
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